Existential Anxiety Scale is generally designed to distinguish the person’s level of anxiety between normal and neurotic anxiety. As existential theorists believe that normal anxiety is an unavoidable and part of human’s life and nature while neurotic anxiety is a blocking of normal anxiety which interferes with self-awareness. Rather than facing and dealing with the threat causing the normal anxiety, the individual cuts him or herself off from it. Thus, this scale is based on self report and may be divided into features that characterize the person’s temperament or describes a current emotional state.
Normal anxiety is also felt on experiencing freedom and realizing that we can create and define our lives through the choices we make. Although some aspects of anxiety appear to be unavoidable byproducts of the human developmental process, humans are still unique among animals. Humans can spend an unusual long period of early life in a relatively helpless condition, and their sense of helplessness can lead to anxiety. In this sense, anxiety is positive, showing us we are basically free to do whatever we choose.
The hypothesis of the current study was that there is a relationship between existential anxiety and other forms of disorders, which is also supported by the findings. From the initial results of people who have had undergone with Existential Anxiety Scale it appears that the more existentially anxious individuals show a higher occurrence of many underlying symptoms or thoughts, even after the effect of depression has been controlled for.
Some Theologians characterized existential anxiety as the state in which a being is aware of its possible nonbeing. They have listed three categories for the nonbeing and resulting anxiety. These are ontic (fate and death), moral (guilt and condemnation), and spiritual (emptiness and meaninglessness). According to these Theologians, the last of these three types of existential anxiety is predominant in modern times while the others were predominant in earlier periods. They argued that this anxiety can be accepted as part of the human condition or it can be resisted but with negative consequences. In its pathological form, spiritual anxiety may tend to drive the person toward the creation of certitude in systems of meaning which are supported by tradition and authority.
There are various scales and tests that measure the individual’s ways of thinking, behaving and functioning within family and society. These scales and tests help assess the person’s level of anxiety, general mental health, emotional intelligence, empathy, suicidal ideation, grief, decision-making, general motivation, attribution, parenting styles and marital satisfaction. Thus, Existential Anxiety Scale can be among them.
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